The power of self-expression

Plus - I wrote about my love life in a national paper. Here's what it was like

Photo by Felicia Buitenwerf on Unsplash

Hello, and thank you for reading The Honesty Box. How are you today? I am tired and a bit jetlagged.

I went to the United Arab Emirates to a conference this week and I have to say there was little evidence of a recession there, with UAE rulers aiming to increase tourism revenue by around £6 billion a year, to reach about £100 billion by 2031. It’s another world.

Anyway, today, I’m writing about revealing more of the real me (emotionally, I mean!), plus what it was like to have details of my personal life published in a national newspaper – by choice.

Someone asked me why I started this newsletter and what it’s like to write it – how exposed do I feel, have I received compliments, support or criticism, and how do I know the extent to which I should reveal aspects of my life.

It took bloody ages for me to have the confidence to start this thing, to find my voice and say the things in my head ‘out loud’.

I literally could not fully open my mouth to speak

To answer the question, I’ve been going back a step and trying to work out why I feel so compelled to write about my life, and I think a big part of it is to do with wanting to express myself to feel fulfilled.

This is going to sound really weird, but I used to have a slight lockjaw problem, which meant I couldn’t always open my mouth fully on the right-hand side.

It was one of those bodily quirks you’re so used to that you barely notice, and I never really gave it much thought until I was holiday in Athens in my 20s, and friends noticed my jaw clicking when I chewed food.

One good trick I learned from a therapist is to ask myself: ‘Is this my choice, is this my voice.’

Looking back, it feels like my stiff jaw was a manifestation of a lack of self-expression: I literally could not fully open my mouth to speak.

There are times when I kept quiet back then, when I wish I’d spoken up, like when I had a bullying boss and didn’t stand up to him, or even back during school days when I sat silently during classes when we were asked to give our opinions, preferring to listen and observe.

Is this my choice, is this my voice?

Nearly two decades later and it’s much better, due to age, confidence, therapy and life experience, I think.

One good trick I learned from a therapist is to ask myself: ‘Is this my choice, is this my voice,’ when I’m in a situation I’m not sure of, or when my boundaries are being tested.

So when I was at a party and feeling really awful as my dad had died a few months earlier, I asked myself that question, and the answer was ‘no,’ so I left. That was more than a decade ago, and I’m still finding ways of voicing my needs.

The Honesty Box is kind of an exploration of finding my voice, being honest about what I do and don’t want. It helps me to express myself in the written word, when sometimes I find it hard to get the spoken words out.

On one level, this newsletter gives me an outlet to pretty much write anything I like, without having to think about pitching ideas to an editor or working out whether I have enough of an angle for a story.

It’s helping me practise writing about my life, rather than writing business journalism (which is my day job).

But mainly, I like it because it’s an exercise in emotional expression, and I like to think of what I write as an experiment. What did I learn from therapy? I’ll write about it. What does it feel like to be physically bare-faced, and go without makeup for a week? Let’s see.

I’ve also got emails and feedback from people who say ‘Oh I thought I was the only one’ who felt a certain way or had a particular experience or are relieved because someone else also felt like a failure at a work event (you can read that post here).

It’s also an exercise in self-discipline: I’ve publicly said I’ll be publishing this fortnightly, so I must hold myself accountable to that (I want to go weekly – more on that soon).

Do it anyway

I haven’t widely promoted The Honesty Box, in part because I was scared about people’s reactions, but I’m going to be brave and stick my neck out more.

I’m going to put this on LinkedIn this week (and thank you if you’re reading this from that post – please consider a free subscription, or I’d love it if you shared it with someone who might like it), which is another experiment: I’m interested in what happens when you post something quite personal on a professional platform, and what boundaries there should be.

And that brings me on to the not-so-juicy details of being in a national newspaper.

I do know how it feels to put something personal out into the public realm for all to see – and have my clients (you could say my bosses) see it and react.

‘Lucy’s in the Guardian’

I wrote a piece for a series in the Guardian called ‘The one change that worked,’ where people explained something they do in their life that helps them.

Mine was all about creating my own boundaries, with the headline ‘I shared stories of my disastrous dates for laughs. Keeping them private has made me happier to be single,’ and it was published in the Guardian’s G2 section in March 2020, complete with a picture they’d sent a photographer round to my flat to take.

Quite exposing, then.

I walked into a client’s office the day the piece was published, and as I approached the news desk, my editor said: ‘Lucy’s in the Guardian’ (not in an unkind way – he was simply stating a fact).

I sat down quietly and cringed a little, but that feeling soon passed. Colleagues asked questions about how I’d pitched and whether I would write more for the paper.

We fear being judged when we are seen for who we really are, so we hide our real selves

A few days later, I was on a call with another client, the publisher of a business magazine, and about halfway through he mentioned the piece and said: ‘I’m sorry to hear dating is so tough right now,’ which again felt a little awkward, but soon passed.

But these minor embarrassments aside, what’s more important is I know the article touched a nerve (and hopefully helped people too) because it got around 450 comments on the Guardian’s website, and I got quite a lot of messages on social media too.

Ironically, that article was actually about not revealing too much, but, on the other hand, I did pretty much shout ‘HELLO I AM SINGLE AND SOMETIMES THAT’S DIFFICULT’ from the rooftops to all and sundry.

I get it. So maybe it was an exercise in revealing, but also concealing.

We fear what ‘other people’ will think if we do or don’t do something

Talking about bits of my personal life can feel awkward in some settings, but I am a ‘whole’ person, and I actually think being vulnerable like this helps me be a better journalist - and friend.

And, I get to choose how much I say about my life (though I didn’t write the headline on that Guardian piece - the editors did that).

The deeper point here is that we fear being judged when we are seen for who we really are, so we hide our real selves.

The more vulnerable and honest we can be with each other, the better our relationships can be

We have ways to keep safe, to fit in, to avoid sticking out. But I think our judgement of ourselves is always harsher than the judgement of others.

We fear what ‘other people’ will think if we do or don’t do something, but really those other people are usually way too busy with their own shit to think too much about us.

And, on the flipside, if you’re judgemental of other people’s clothes/habits/jobs/food choices/whatever, the chances are you’re actually very judgemental of yourself.

And here’s the bigger thing: I believe the more vulnerable and honest we can be with each other, the better our relationships can be, and the more understanding there will be in the world. And if The Honesty Box can be a part of that, then I’m content.

Things I like

Philanthropy in action

Philanthropist Bobby Sager is so rich he spent a reported $300,000 on some parquet floor for his home, which used to be part of his favourite basketball team’s court. But he’s no ordinary uber-wealthy person - instead of simply writing cheques to non-profits, he goes to live in the places he wants to help.

That could be in Pakistan, where he helped victims of the 2005 earthquake, to Nepal, where he and his family helped to build rural schools. I saw him speak this week at the Global Citizen Forum, a kind of conference aiming to get wealthy people to actually make a difference, rather than just talk about it (I’m not including myself among those - I’m just the journalist/observer).

Dancefloor filler

On Friday night I went to DJ Annie Mac’s Before Midnight club night at Chalk in Brighton (the third time I’ve been to Before Midnight) and everyone went wild for LF System’s ‘Afraid To Feel’.

It was one of those tunes that of course I’m too old to have heard before because I rarely listen to music released after 1998, so I’ve been googling what I thought the lyrics were.

When it came on, I jumped up and down on a mini podium with my friend Nicky, pretending to know the words and shouting ‘On the dancefloor, on the dancefloor….’ Luckily Annie put the song on her Instagram and it turns out the words are ‘Who could ask for more,’ so I eventually found it online. Club classic.